Hole in One by Walter Stewart Page B

phoned and just had to have a golf lesson at seven a.m., and then someone else came along just as I was finishing that, and, with one thing and another, it wasn’t until just before ten that I got here. I discovered the body just about the time the others showed up, so I told them to wait and went to fetch you. I could kick myself.”
    â€œHey, it wasn’t your fault. You had no way of knowing there was any danger to Dr. Rose.”
    â€œBut I did. Or, at least, I should have.”
    â€œWhy? What did he say?”
    â€œHe said that he had a feeling somebody was watching him all the time he was poking around. He hadn’t done much, really, just some preliminary scratching. I told him it was probably curious golfers, wondering he was up to, but he said he didn’t think so. Someone was definitely out there in the bushes, and it was getting dark. I said teenagers often go out after people are finished for the day, to look for balls, and he thought that was probably it. But you could tell by the tone of his voice that he was worried; he didn’t like it. That’s what he wanted to talk to me about, and I didn’t even show up.”
    â€œWas he the kind of guy who spooks easily?”
    â€œI wouldn’t think so. He was a field anthropologist, after all. He’d been all over the world and worked in all kinds of conditions. I’d have said, if anything, that he was unflappable. He was the typical absentminded professor.”
    He smiled. “In fact, he once put one of his neighbour’s kids to bed.”
    â€œHe what?”
    â€œAbsolutely. This was quite a while ago, when he had a flock of young kids, four or five of them. His wife went out for the evening and gave him strict instructions to make sure the kids got to bed on time, so, in due course, he put them to bed. One of them kicked up a stink, but Dr. Rose paid no attention and went back to work in his study. A couple of hours later, one of his neighbours turned up, looking frantically for a kid who was long overdue at home, and, sure enough, he was upstairs in bed, sound asleep.”
    He went on in a very mild voice, “The son-of-a-bitch who killed him murdered a very interesting character, as well as a fine scholar. I think it’s clear that whoever did it had him under surveillance at the golf course, followed him here, and then went away and set up all this elaborate arrangement with the tomahawk and the sign. And then they came back and killed him.”
    â€œCould it have been someone from the Circle Lake Band?” I asked.
    â€œDon’t be silly,” said Hanna. “If Dr. Rose was working for the band, why would someone from the band kill him?”
    â€œLook at the message across his chest,” said Joe. “It might be a totally false lead, or it might suggest just what it says. The Circle Lake Band is divided, like every other group, by a lot of factions. Someone might have decided that Dr. Rose, by digging around, was, in fact, desecrating sacred ground.”
    â€œWell, we can’t get anywhere this way,” I said. I was getting increasingly edgy about sitting around in a motel room with Dr. Rose, however fine a fellow he might have been. “You guys better scram out of here, and I’ll call the cops.”
    As predicted, the police were not pleased to hear that there had been another murder on their turf. Staff Sergeant Harry Burnett did a bit of cursing when I gave him the glad tidings over the phone and then told me to “stay the hell right there,” even though I told him that I had screens to paint. He said he would call the Ontario Provincial Police, since the Silver Falls bunch, like the
Lancer
, don’t do murders.
    About five minutes later, two cruisers from the local Ontario Provincial Police detachment pulled up and, pretty soon, we were up to our hips in cops, with the fingerprint kits and the photography kits and the measuring tapes and the works.